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Drugs like fentanyl aren’t just creating new risks for human police officers. The dogs who use their powerful noses to sniff out drugs are inhaling the dangerous synthetic opioids as well. So police departments are taking new steps to protect their dogs – and respond if the K-9s get sick.

Normally, it’s a police dog’s job to protect its handler, not the other way around. If you’re a police dog and somebody runs at your human waving a weapon, there’s only one response: you attack.

According to the CDC, the amount of opioid painkillers peaked in 2010, but as of 2015, the prescribing rate remained three times as high as in 1999, when the nation’s problem with opioid addiction was just getting started.

Although it has not yet been declared an official emergency by the federal government, the opioid epidemic continues across the country. Georgia is no exception. There are 0.77 prescriptions for every person in Georgia.

Lisa Kidd knows the drill. She flashes her identification card without needing to be prompted and has her lockbox open, ready to go. This is what she’s up to every fourth Tuesday of the month: picking up her methadone prescription at Counseling Solutions Treatment Center in Chatsworth, Georgia.

Opioids are a $10 billion industry for pharmaceutical companies. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, from 1999 to 2014, more than 165,000 persons died from overdose related to opioid pain medication in the United States. Today, thousands more are struggling with drug dependency that started with opioids given to them by doctors.